We speak of Sudan, that is to say, of the United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates are everywhere, whether publicly or in the shadows, but always very close to where influence, money and important decisions are made. The latest most media-friendly example we have is in one of the major controversies of this Football World Cup. The president of FIFA's disciplinary committee, who agreed to withdraw Folarin Balogun's red card without consulting any of the other committee members and at the request of Donald Trump, is Mohammad al-Kamali, a lawyer and former member of the Parliament of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Another much less media-friendly and much less frivolous example is Sudan, where a war has been going on for years that is already the largest humanitarian crisis in the world according to the United Nations.
The UAE are considered one of the main financiers and arms suppliers of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the armed group responsible for a “genocide” in the Sudanese city of Al-Fashir at the end of last year. The evidence keeps piling up. NGOs like Human Rights Watch have been sounding the alarm for years, as have various journalistic investigations. One of the latest is from Lighthouse Reports, which in late June detailed how FSR soldiers are training with weapons supplied by the Emirates in Libya.
These past few weeks, Sudan has once again made headlines because the situation is deteriorating and a new escalation of violence is feared, now in the strategic city of Al-Obeid. The UN and G7 have issued several warnings and condemnations. But all these warnings have one thing in common: they do not mention the UAE and its fundamental role in the continuation of the war.
Europe breaks the taboo
However, there has been an exception: the European Parliament. Last week, the Eurochamber approved a resolution that, for the first time, explicitly mentions the role the UAE has in the war and urges them to stop "financing, arming, or providing any other support to the FSRs". It has gone largely unnoticed, but it has strong symbolic weight because the last time they tried – last November – the Emirates deployed a strong lobby in Strasbourg to convince MEPs that they had nothing to do with this war. Spoiler: the November resolution did not mention the Emirates.
However, parliamentary resolutions serve little more than to pressure those who do have the capacity to make decisions, namely European governments and the European Commission, and they have another agenda that does not include confrontation with the Emirates.
On Monday, the EU announced a ban on the purchase, import, and transfer of gold originating from Sudan, one of the main sources of war financing. However, the announcement makes no reference to the Emirates, even though it is also known that the majority of gold leaving Sudan passes through Dubai – one of the seven United Arab Emirates – one of the world's main gold markets. Furthermore, the European Commission, eager for new trading partners after the headaches it has with Washington, is in full negotiations for a trade agreement with the Gulf country. They are already on the seventh round of talks.
If the EU truly wants to contribute to ending the war in Sudan, conditioning trade talks on the halt of FSR financing would be much more effective than approving symbolic sanctions or voting on resolutions. “Resolutions do not stop bullets,” lamented Sudanese lawyer and human rights defender Salih Mahmoud Osman in an article.
